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Oregon's History Oregon’s History: People of the Northwest in the Land of Eden Oregon’s History: People of the Northwest in the Land of Eden ATHANASIOS MICHAELS Oregon’s History: People of the Northwest in the Land of Eden by Athanasios Michaels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Contents Introduction 1 1. Origins: Indigenous Inhabitants and Landscapes 3 2. Curiosity, Commerce, Conquest, and Competition: 12 Fur Trade Empires and Discovery 3. Oregon Fever and Western Expansion: Manifest 36 Destiny in the Garden of Eden 4. Native Americans in the Land of Eden: An Elegy of 63 Early Statehood 5. Statehood: Constitutional Exclusions and the Civil 101 War 6. Oregon at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 137 7. The Dawn of the Civil Rights Movement and the 179 World Wars in Oregon 8. Cold War and Counterculture 231 9. End of the Twentieth Century and Beyond 265 Appendix 279 Preface Oregon’s History: People of the Northwest in the Land of Eden presents the people, places, and events of the state of Oregon from a humanist-driven perspective and recounts the struggles various peoples endured to achieve inclusion in the community. Its inspiration came from Carlos Schwantes historical survey, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History which provides a glimpse of national events in American history through a regional approach. David Peterson Del Mar’s Oregon Promise: An Interpretive History has a similar approach as Schwantes, it is a reflective social and cultural history of the state’s diversity. The text offers a broad perspective of various ethnicities, political figures, and marginalized identities. Neither provide a traditionalist historiography of the American West. Traditionalist works replicated the heroic pioneer in the wilderness narrative embraced by historians like Frederick Jackson Turner at the beginning of the twentieth century. Other works such as Elizabeth McLagan’s Peculiar Paradise interrogated inherent racism of the traditional historical approach of the American West that enshrined a linear narrative of Euro-American colonization bearing progress and civilization to Oregon. McLagan’s analyzes the establishment of the African American community and their struggles against racial oppression in Oregon. This “open textbook” is a social and cultural history of the people of Oregon representing powerful figures from the dominant Euro- American culture, the marginalized and oppressed, and social and political reformers who shaped the historical legacy of the state. It is a story of the diverse array of immigrants who helped build the state and strengthen it. The title is a recollection of the racial fantasies that European-American settlers created in their expansionist Introduction | 1 vision of the West and the state of Oregon. Initially the Oregon Territory was built on intolerance and racial exclusivity, but eventually Oregon embraces its diversity, but not without struggle and heartache. Our journey through the past starts with an essential question, “Who are the people of Oregon?” 2 | Introduction 1. Origins: Indigenous Inhabitants and Landscapes Mount Mazama: Giiwas Oregon is a vast land filled with enchantment, wonder, and promise. Unlike other regions in the continental United States, Oregon hosts a variety of microclimates, terrain, and a variety of flora and fauna that could fill an entire museum. The coastal region offers a majestic and serene back porch to the gigantic and powerful Pacific Ocean surging with potential energy and promise for humankind. To the east of the Coastal Range lies the Willamette Valley and its rich, arable soils nestled between two mountain ranges. On the eastern side of the valley are the Cascade Mountains (known as Yamakiasham Yaina or “mountains of the northern people”), which run through the center of the state into Washington and British Columbia. The Cascades are a series of phantasmal Origins: Indigenous Inhabitants and Landscapes | 3 peaks that can be seen on a clear day in the Willamette Valley. Some of the iconic peaks include Mount Hood (known as Wy’east by the Multnomah Tribe) east of Portland, Oregon and the turbulent, crop- topped Mount Saint Helens (known as Lawetlat’la by the Cowlitz people) in southern Washington. East of the Cascades lies the Columbia Plateau, High Desert, and Blue Mountain regions. The eastern portion of the state is marked by a drier climate in part due to the rain shadow cast by the Cascade Mountains. The northeastern border of the state, adjacent to Idaho, is home to the Wallowa Mountains and Hells Canyon, the deepest river gorge in the United States, and one of the deepest in the world. The Columbia River forms the Columbia River Gorge along the northern border separating the states of Washington and Oregon. The river is named after the ship of the fur trader and explorer Robert Gray, who sailed through the mouth of the mighty river in 1792. The Columbia River is home to various salmon, providing the backbone of life within the biodiverse environment and landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Since Oregon is a mountainous region with active and dormant volcanos, it would be fitting to begin an Oregon story with a significant event in the state’s geological history. Mount Mazama, (known as Giiwas by the Klamath and Modoc peoples) with a peak approximately 12,000 feet high, was part of a complex of active volcanoes. The mountain was destroyed 7,700 years ago by an enormous explosion of molten rock that caused its collapse. The force of the explosion was estimated to have been forty-two times greater than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980. When the top half of Saint Helens crumbled into Spirit Lake, it completely altered the lake sending a wall of water, rocks and debris into the Columbia River. The eruption of Mount Mazama sent a towering column of pumice and ash thirty miles high into the atmosphere, and when it collapsed, it formed the Crater Lake caldera. The volcanic material settled in thick layers around the outer rim of the caldera, and as the volcanic depression deepened, rain and snowmelt began to fill the caldera. Wizard Island was formed during 4 | Origins: Indigenous Inhabitants and Landscapes a separate eruption and stands above the surface of Crater Lake. Indigenous peoples of the Klamath River region recognized Mount Mazama, both before and after its transformation into Crater Lake, as a spiritual center of great power and continue to hold great awe and respect for the mountain. The Klamath historical memory of Giiwas corresponds closely to geologic data of the cataclysmic eruption. According to one source, the eruption of Mount Mazama was seen as retribution for the people’s violation of taboos, and as punishment for their arrogance and decadence. “They were being punished for forgetting the right way to live,” according to one Klamath.[1] In the wake of the eruption, Crater Lake was seen as a place of potency for visions. The local Klamath, Modoc and Paiute, in addition to Takelma people from the Rogue River Valley, have travelled to the mountain for generations for a variety of cultural and spiritual purposes. Another significant geologic event that shaped the State of Oregon was the Missoula Flood, or formerly known as the “Spokane Flood.” It was a series of floods that carved out the Columbia Gorge and the Willamette Valley at the end of the Pleistocene Era approximately 13-15 thousand years ago. The ice dams at the Clark Fork River periodically ruptured releasing a torrent of flood waters with an estimated force of ten times the combined hydropower in all the world’s rivers. The water carried rocks and other debris barreling down the Spokane River Valley, westward through the Columbia River Gorge, carving out the Grand Coulee and the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington, and spilling into the Willamette Valley and the Pacific Ocean. After each release of water, ice would rebuild on the glacial Lake Missoula. Like an overflowing tub, the water pooled in the glacial lake increasing to about twice the size of the state Rhode Island, only to repeat the process again over time. As a result of the Missoula Flood, large boulders and alluvial silt were deposited into Willamette Valley forming fertile agricultural lands. About 6,000 years ago, humans descended from the surrounding hills into the Willamette Valley when the floor became dry enough. Today, hikers and nature enthusiasts can learn Origins: Indigenous Inhabitants and Landscapes | 5 about this event along the Columbia River Gorge in places like Beacon Rock, Washington. Fort Rock Sandals In 1938, University of Oregon archaeologist Luther Cressman discovered dozens of sandals below a layer of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Mazama at Fort Rock Basin of Central Oregon. The sandals were constructed from sagebrush bark and date from 10,400 to 9,100 years ago, making them among the oldest footwear ever found. Archaeological excavations have taken place at Paisley Caves in southern Oregon since the 1930s. Stone projectile points, baskets, rope, wooden artifacts, and animal bones found in the caves date back to at least 13,200 years ago, predating artifacts from the famous Clovis culture, first documented in New Mexico, by more than one thousand years. Scientists have concluded that Paisley Caves, 220 miles southeast of Eugene on the eastern side of the Cascades, were an ancient stopping place for trade among indigenous peoples. Newer theories have emerged on human migration into the American continent that brought the original inhabitants into 6 | Origins: Indigenous Inhabitants and Landscapes Oregon. The Bering Land Bridge theory became the orthodox view among archaeologists as the primary explanation for human migration into the Americas. But according to Cressman and other scientists’ findings, the Bering Land Bridge theory doesn’t account for the presence of people in North America 13 thousand years ago.
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